new hobby

Jim C

Jim C

Oldtimer
so i have been teaching myself cad and 3d modeling. not the easiest thing to learn. i ordered myself a 3d printer which i have been the past few weeks trying to get tuned in and working correctly. here is a pic of my first car related print. a local guy is building a 55 elcamino, pic attached. rather than me painting a logo i decided to make him some custom emblems. the pic show it raw off the printer. just a little primer to smooth it out and ill shoot them a charcoal. he wanted it elcameo. apparently there was a truck called a cameo....no idea and before my time.

IMG_2022.jpg

IMG_1950.jpg
 
Jim,

That's going to be a beautiful pickup. 1955 was an amazing year for Chevrolet. Between the small block V8, the Nomad station wagon and the Cameo pickup it was a great time to be a car crazy kid.

I was 10 years old when I saw my first Cameo in 1955. My parents took a summer road trip from Long Island, NY to California and then up the coast into the Canadian Rockies. I lost a lot of sleep in LA, trying not to miss a custom or hot rod -- they were everywhere. The year before our trip a new '54 Chevy pickup looked like this:

54ChevyPickup-Copy_zps908bfa64.jpg


Nice truck but the new '55 Chevy was an unbelievable change. It was a good year for GM and the new pickup looked great:

55ChevyPickup_zpsebf98298.jpg


During the long drive through Texas, we passed a truck that was just unbelievable. It was my first Chevy Cameo and it stopped at the same diner and gas station as us. I decided not to eat and just walked around the white and red pickup until we had to leave. It had a fiberglass bed-liner and a really cool rear bumper with an almost rolled pan built in.

55ChevyCameo-Copy_zps8f3f84df.jpg


At the time, I spent my weekly $0.25 allowance on car magazines and one of my favorites was Rod & Custom. I liked it and Car Craft because they were a small size (5.5" x 8" or so) and you could hide it in almost any schoolbook. That summer Rod & Custom was almost finished with the first iteration of the Dream Truck, which was a chopped, channeled and sectioned '50 Chevy pickup with chrome-reverse wheels and enough custom parts to fill a book.

DreamTruck_zps4e2f6c13.jpg


I've never owned a pickup but have had a deep love for them most of my life.
 
ahhh so thats a cameo!

- - - Updated - - -

yes everything is c5

its really cool and done exceptionally well. everything is tight and right on the money
 
Very nice, Looks like a welded-up Nomad rear bumper. As much as I like Nomads, I think the smooth tailgate looks much better.
 
thanks, the owner himself built the car / truck. a buddy of mine is doing the paint. diamont base and all spi for primer and clear.
 
I give you a lot of credit, Jim, I got a hold of a used CAD system about ten years ago and gave up real fast.
I had no purpose for it, just wanted to learn it, so that could be why I gave up.
 
Bob Heine;31032 said:
It had a fiberglass bed-liner
Click to expand...

If I'm not mistaken, I think the bed sides were also fiberglass.

He did a nice job on the top transition, that seems to be where a lot of El Camino projects fail IMO. Good decission to use the big back window from the pickup and I believe the cab on the Cameo was the same as the regular big window pickup. Nice project.
 
chev he did say something about the way to roof would be bowed in the middle and be goofy looking. he was sure if he did the project that the roof was going to look right.

barry, there are so many different cad programs out there its not funny. the one i am learning is called rhino3d. its not parametric like the way solidworks or autocad is. those programs are more for engineering and making complete assemblies that function. in other words the software knows the function of each part, how it works in relationship to the other parts. this way you could build a whole car or engine with it and see all the part work on the screen and be stress tested, things like that. rhino is just like those without the parametric part. its a modeling program. its a precision cad program like the others but the parts have no relationship to the other parts. it makes it a bit simpler but still will take about 2 years of messing with it to become quick at it. rhino is big in the lewelry design, marine industry and architectural design.
 
On the subject of Chevy pick ups - I would hope you guys were informed of the Lambrecht Chevrolet auction out in Pierce Nebraska. What a collection of cars - what a story. All over you tube. They have a 58 Cameo pick up still on MSO from the dealer - truck has less than 10 miles on it. There are over 450 cars that havent been moved in years. They are being auctioned off at the end of September, I've been watching the on-line bidding. Check out the mid 60's pick ups available - and the mileage on them. Incredible. All offered through VanDerBrink auctions. Pick your project car! I'd love to get out there just to look at this collection! Lots of tri 5 cars. One of those mid 60's pick ups would make a nice resto-rod project..
 
Went to a show Saturday and a guy used his 3D printer for all the emblems, the skull on his radiator and numerous things for his rat rod. Sorry, no pics.
 
Hot acetone vapor is something to be very, very careful with. Certain mixtures with air become highly explosive and unstable.
 
yes acetone will shine it up a bit but really about a min with a sander then some primer and its ready for paint. those lines in the surface of the emblem i posted a pic of are only 150 microns thick so they will sand right out. for all of us as painters its far easy to print basically what we want a just paint it. i have done the acetone thing and for me and most of us here it would not fly as a finished part when done. it certainly is a cool device. its not quite as easy as its made out to be. its being pushed as the next new technology where every household will eventually have one and the house wife can just goto the computer and press print just like a photograph. thats just not the case. cad and 3d modeling aside, the printer and software has a learning curve all on its own. its no different than a cnc mill in a machine shop. you need to know the machine, the brand and type of filament, what and how you can print and how to adjust the 150 of so different setting in the slicing software. it can be a bit overwhelming. if you use it everyday it could take you a couple months of messing with to figure everything out and start printing consistently. once you got that all down then to make anything other than basic shapes you need to know some type of decent cad or 3d modeling software. that alone can take a few months just to get the basics and a couple years to get proficient at it. its all good fun though and its cool to be able to design something then a few hours later pop it off the bed of the printer.

the printer i got was a makergear m2.
www.makergear.com
 
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